Guitar luminary + Niger’s folk hero Omara “Bombino” Moctar has shared new single “Ayo Nigla” + accompanying music video, taken from his upcoming album Sahel, out September 15th via Partisan Records.

“Ayo Nigla” unplugs Bombino’s trademark face-melting guitar mastery and turns it into one of the subtlest, heartfelt songs he has ever recorded. In a rare moment of acoustic vulnerability, Bombino mourns a love gone unreciprocated and eventually lost forever. He explains: “This song is dedicated to a girl that I loved too much and to whom I had declared my passion but went ignored. I lived with this love in solitude, deep in my soul.”

‘Sahel’ takes its name from the vast African region spanning East-West from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, and is the highly anticipated follow-up to his 2018 album Deran. To bring the Sahel to life, Bombino worked closely with Welsh producer David Wrench (David Byrne, Frank Ocean, Caribou Goldfrapp, The xx, Sampha), decamping with his bandmates to a studio in Casablanca for ten days to lay down the album.

Pre-order Sahel HERE